Abraham named a mountain this after God stopped his hand — it means 'the LORD sees to it', not a title he used elsewhere.
The phrase comes from the ordinary Hebrew verb ra'ah, 'to see', which stretches to cover looking, noticing, perceiving, and — in this causative-feeling use — seeing to something, making sure it happens. When Abraham says God will 'see' the lamb, he means God will supply it. The same root gives Hebrew its words for seeing a vision and for choosing someone out by sight, so 'provide' is only one branch of what the verb can do.
What makes this entry different from most name-words is that it names one moment, not a repeated attribute. Abraham gives the mountain this name after the ram appears in the thicket. It is a memorial, fixed to that place and that story, not a divine title scattered through the rest of the Bible the way 'the LORD is my shepherd' becomes a recurring line.
Abraham answered, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two walked on together.
The same verb, yireh, is used moments earlier: God 'will see' to the lamb.
And Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. So to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
The only place the phrase itself occurs, as the name Abraham gives the mountain.
Now the LORD said to Samuel, “How long are you going to mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have selected from his sons a king for Myself.”
The same verb used for God 'providing' a king shows the sense outside Genesis.
I once was young and now am old, yet never have I seen the righteous abandoned or their children begging for bread.
The plain sense 'seen' from the same root shows how close 'see' and 'provide' sit together.
English translations render it 'the LORD will provide' (so KJV, ESV, NIV), which sounds like a promise about future supply. That is defensible, since Hebrew verb tenses (this is an imperfect) don't map neatly onto English future or present. But it flattens the pun: the same verb was just used for God 'seeing' the lamb, and English has to pick 'provide' or 'see' rather than let one word carry both.
People often treat 'Jehovah Jireh' as one of a set of divine names, like 'Jehovah Rapha' or 'Jehovah Shalom', implying God is repeatedly called 'the Provider' through the Old Testament. He isn't. This phrase appears once, as the name of a specific place, coined by Abraham after one event, and it never becomes a standing title for God elsewhere in the text.
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